Description
The Pamunkey Indian Tribe is one of 11 Virginia Indian tribal governments recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the state's first federally recognized tribe, receiving its status in January 2016. Initial contact with Europeans was around 1570. "And from [1570] on at ever briefer intervals until the first permanent English colony was established at Jamestown in 1607, the Powhatan Confederacy was visited by white men: Spanish, French, and English.". Scholars estimate that when the English arrived in 1607, this paramount chiefdom numbered about 14,000–21,000 people. Some scholars believe that the Pamunkey have occupied their tribal area for 10,000 to 12,000 years.
Language
Powhatan or Virginia Algonquian
Culture
The traditional Pamunkey way of life was subsistence living. They lived through a combination of fishing, trapping, hunting, and farming. The latter was developed in the late Woodland Period of culture, roughly the years 900 to 1600. The peoples used the Pamunkey River as a main mode of transportation and food source. The river also provided access to hunting grounds, and other tribes. Pamunkey homes, called yihakans (or yehakins), were long and narrow; they were described as "longhouses" by English colonists. The Pamunkey practice of matrilineal succession also created some confusion for Englishmen, who finally in the 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation recognized the Pamunkey queen.